Golden
by she-was-a-rose
Summary: When the TARDIS regenerated, she kept Rose's bedroom.
1. she was a Rose

When the TARDIS regenerated, she kept Rose's bedroom. He didn't know that at first. He thought he had lost the last trace of his pink and golden flower, the last remnant of her scent.

The first night of loneliness, when his new stray slept in her silver bed and he wandered and wandered seeking the garden, she led him there. He saw the door, first, closed as though Rose could still be there, sleeping. She had taken to leaving it cracked open in the last days so that he could come and hold her when the nightmares came calling. No cracks today.

A tear shimmered in his eye as he looked up to the ceiling and whispered, half sarcastically, "Oh thanks, dear." But he couldn't keep himself from looking inside.

What had changed? A golden-sheeted bed, left unmade since that fateful day at Canary Wharf. Strands of blonde hair gleamed at him from the pillow which had long since lost the indentation of her head.

He walked slowly over to the bedside table where the lamp stayed lit, waiting for her to come home. A picture in a frame, her and _the other him, the Doctor-that-was, the Doctor-that-would-be, the man currently sharing her heart and home_, smiling through the frame and striking his hearts. One skipped a beat, the heart that would always belong to her.

This Doctor, the new-new-new one, sat on the golden bed with a sigh that would have broken her heart.

Nothing left. Nothing that mattered.


	2. she was his only home

_As he sat, he remembered._

He had needed her. She became the sun and the balance to his dark life.

Where he saw journeys and adventures, possibilities for excitement, Rose saw souls. Oh, she reveled in the excitement as well, but she perceived so much more than that.

Rose saw people, and knew that they were like her, knew that they were hurting, and needed someone to care. They were the little people, no great leaders, no celebrities among them.

He gravitated toward the great ones, while his strange flower faced those in the shadows.

The Doctor-who-was would have passed by, missed their significance.

They were nothing special. They could not see the turn of worlds as he could, could not possibly understand his pain. They were not important.

He would not have seen how the human soul suffered and lived, how their lives filled with starshine and death and joy and children, as their world turned.

He had forgotten. Those he encountered may have seemed poor and plain and obscure, but such perceptions by no means meant that they were soulless and heartless as well.

_He met a girl. _

A teenage shopgirl from 21st century London with a penchant for heavy mascara, fish and chips; she was the Rose who saw to their hearts, and who cut to his through his glass cover.

_She struck him to the bone. A fiery flower bloomed in his hearts, melting and breaking and causing the flow of fresh, achingly alive blood._

Rose found the lost ones, the hurting, and she showed the Doctor what it was to feel their hurt again.

_He had closed off empathy, had never wished to feel._

Rose cared.

So he learned to care again.

And he lost her

_He lost his hearts_

_again._

So he took the pain; he took the suffering and the new loss which cut like a frozen blade through his blood, and he gathered it with the raw memories of love rediscovered;

as he regenerated he threw all that into one heart

* * *

_the heart that was breaking always had been breaking forever be broken for his Rose_

* * *

so he could imagine a future without pain

strangely, locking her away gave him hope

_she was a rose_

_a burning flower in his blood and bones_

_she was his only home_

He lay on his side in the golden bed. The pillow smelled like the most intoxicating of perfumes, as though he was close enough to smell her hair once again.


	3. lost her in time

The mattress sinks slightly. He frowns at the weight disturbing his only peaceful rest.

"I'll tell you a secret."

His hearts shudder in shock at the familiar voice.

"Promise not to tell?"

Her voice is honey and wine and bubbling streams. His had been jagged rocks smoothed by calming waters, now bouncy and high on a broken trampoline.

He doesn't dare open his eyes. It would hurt to see even her ghost. He doesn't have to open them though, to see the mischevious grin, tongue playfully touching teeth.

"Doctor...d'you promise?"

The bed creaks as the honey-and-wine moves closer. A whisper in his ear as he screws his eyes shut against the pain. "_The girl was never there_."

Startled eyes shot open. He expected...He didn't know what he expected. An empty golden bed, maybe, with a crease where a phantom sat. A lingering floral scent in the air. Perhaps even...no, that would have been too much to ask.

He saw none of that. The bed, the picture, the room. There was just...nothing. Just...

_the nothingness of the mind of a broken Timelord the only Timelord none left just me won't you run_

_**run**_

_run for your life_

The Doctor woke. The universe sang a kaleidescope of color into being

creating the destroyed

_which death is this which life was it real was it real was __**she**_

* * *

The touch on his hand brought him back. He adjusted his glasses abstractedly as the blonde woman spoke, grinning into his shoulder "Doctor? I asked if you could keep a secret." She looked up at him meltingly, and his heart ached for the other's loss.

"Mum can't know just yet, I want it to be a surprise..."


End file.
